Review/Television; Wallace Stevens: A Poet's Double Life

By JOHN J. O'CONNOR

Published: March 31, 1988

One of the more intriguing aspects of watching ''Voices and Visions,'' public television's 13-part series on American poets, is the discovery of certain patterns and motifs. There is, for instance, the curious phenomenon of the ''double life.'' William Carlos Williams was a world-renowned poet and a practicing pediatrician in a small New Jersey town. Now, tonight at 10 on Channel 13, we have Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), who explored exotic verbal worlds in his poetry while working as a claims lawyer for the Hartford Insurance Group. Produced by Jill Janows and directed by Richard P. Rodgers, ''Wallace Stevens: Man Made out of Words'' is still another splendid addition to a fine series.

Once again, the poems are ''dramatized,'' supplemented with images that not so much illustrate as distill the essence of single lines and even individual words. The very first scene presents a raging storm, complete with thunder and lightning, while we hear that it is July and ''summer is changed to winter/the young grow old.'' A Florida beach setting and old newsreels are used, quite effectively, to evoke the mood and tone of ''The Idea of Order at Key West.'' All the while, critics, biographers and other poets are brought on camera to review and explain, as far as is reasonably possible, Stevens's life and work. The formula has proven rewarding for this series.

Few of his neighbors and associates in Connecticut knew the man well. He seems to have been as distant in his daily work routines as he was obscure in his poetry. One insurance colleague recalls Stevens as ''respected, perhaps a little bit feared.'' Mark Strand, a poet, observes that there was something intensely secretive about Stevens. Harold Bloom, the critic, describes him as a ''poet of the most profound subjectivity.'' Born in Reading, Pa., Stevens is said to have become an agnostic at Harvard, where he came under the influence of William James and George Santayana. He worked briefly in New York as a journalist but couldn't handle the ''brutal reality'' of a city in which everything had its price.

If God were dead, as Nietzsche had loudly proclaimed, Stevens would search for a higher order. And he seemed to find it in the imagination, which he considered a great transformer of the world. But James Merrill, the poet, shrewdly notes that this imagination, while powerful, could also be ''perhaps subversive.'' Mr. Merrill, who reads several of the poems with insight and sensitivity, also points out how Stevens was extremely interested in polar things, in how opposites depend on one another. The poet himself would careen frequently between his staid existence and unhappy marriage in Connecticut and the tropical, decidedly sensual lures of Key West, ''the uttermost point of the American landscape.''

There is much that remains obscure about Stevens's poetry, and this television essay does ask, how do you deal with it? Mr. Strand argues that Americans have become too dependent on journalese, that our tolerance for the complicated is minimal. Approaching Stevens, we are told, perhaps it is only necessary to appreciate the great beauty, the enticement of the words. ''Man Made out of Words'' should send a good many viewers to the library or bookstore to find out for themselves.

One note: while on the highroad, it would be advisable to set aside time to watch tomorrow's ''Great Performances'' presentation of Moliere's ''Miser.'' It can be seem on Channel 13 at 9 P.M. Adapted by Alan Drury, this version of the classic play was directed by Michael Simpson and produced for the BBC by Shaun Sutton. The scene has been shifted to Victorian England, suggesting a Dickensian flavor that doesn't quite work. Even in translation, Moliere is quintessentially French.

Nevertheless, there are compensations, chief among them the opportunity to watch Nigel Hawthorne in the title role. The extraordinary Mr. Hawthorne has been seen here in, among many things, ''Mapp and Lucia'' and ''Yes, Minister.'' Now, in still another stunning transformation, he has come up with a cringing, sniveling Harpagon who seems to have overdosed on old Donald Pleasence movies. It's a thoroughly shameless romp. And the star is very capably supported by Janet Suzman, Ron Cook and Peter Chesholm (the younger half of ''Sorrell and Son''), who sometimes seem to be trying not to laugh out loud at Mr. Hawthorne's antics.